Cheap as chips and great views as you cross the East River. Plus Roosevelt Island is a really cool part of the City.

Judy Berdy is the director of the RIHS and is amazing. We crossed the street for drinks after Robert’s talk and she just happened to have a set of plans for the Goldwater Memorial Hospital building designed by Isadore Rosnfield.

I stayed with friends Pieper and Merrill on the Lower East Side. This is a view of Grand Street from the window of my room.

I often get requests for more photos of the Olive, so here is a recent one.

Julianne Wick Davis has been working on a song cycle based on my photographs of the suitcases for the past several years. Here is a link to a previous post. She is nearing completion of the process and is starting to move to the next stage.

I am very excited to announce that she has put together a preview of the work that will take place at Joe’s Pub in New York City on the 3rd of May. Here is a link to where tickets can be purchased. If you are in the New York area and can make it to the show, it should be amazing. I’ll be there and I am hoping that Peggy Ross can make it as well. We are so excited about this. The space is not huge, so I would encourage you all to get your tickets as soon as possible. Hope to see you there.

The following Thursday (the 10th), I’ll be back on Roosevelt Island for another talk at the RI Historical society. More on that soon. That one is free and open to the public.

This was the first case I photographed. It was the 17th of March 2011. Craig Williams had given me permission to gain access to the collection and I was very excited. I remember setting up my wrinkled background and fiddling with my lights. It struck me at the time that it would be interesting to document the entire process of shooting the cases, including what they looked like after the museum had wrapped them back up after the conservation process.

This is part of what I saw when I finally got the case open. Quite a way to start the project. This is what I posted about that first day.

Today at about 2.30 I finished editing all of the cases that we have shot, and uploaded the final photographs to the suitcases site. This case belonge to Lawrence R. I especially like the headline in the Democrat and Chronicle.

This day has been a long time in coming. We will see what happens with the project in the fullness of time, but I am very excited and happy to have made it this far.

Connie Houde was kind enough to take this picture of Peg and me on that last day of shooting. I think champagne might have been involved.

There are too many folks to thank for all of the support, encouragement, and love that I have felt since I began photographing the suitcases in 2011. But I think of you all the time. Thank you all.

This morning I uploaded the last of the photographs of Rodrigo’s possessions. His cases were really interesting and you can check them all out here.

Rodrigo maintained a strong connection his native Philippines, and also had an interesting collection of books.

There were several items pressed between the pages of a few of them.

This hat was pretty cool and the white object at the bottom seems to be shark’s teeth strung together into some sort of necklace.

Peg and I shot our last suitcase on Monday the 9th of November 2015. I will be editing that work in a day or two, and that will be it as far as what was in the New York State Museum collection. Craig Williams seems to remember that there are a few cases that never went to the Museum that are in the Romulus Historical Society. If so, we’ll try to track those down and photograph them. I photographed the first case (Freda B) on the 17th of March 2011, and this has been quite an amazing ride. I just want to thank all of you who follow the project for all the good wishes, support, and interest. Now that the editing is just about done, I’ll be spending much of my time moving on to the next stage. I’ll also take a minute to thank Peggy Ross again for her continued help. I couldn’t have done this without her.

I am back to editing more of Rodrigo L’s papers. This is an amazing photo postcard. / Rodrigo lived in Salt Lake City during his high school years. Many of his yearbooks are in his collection as well as a ton of materials related to his Pilipino experience in the US .

He came to the American West sometime in the early part of the 20th Century, which makes me wonder what his experience adapting to his new life was like.

I have just three more shoots to edit. I have a feeling that when I finish that part of the project I will be very emotional and a little bit at sea. Still lots to do though, including finding a publisher and museums / galleries for exhibits. I started shooting the cases in March of 2011. It has been quite a run. Thanks for following.

I have posted about Madeline before and her possessions represent a very interesting life before she came to Willard.

Throughout this project I have consciously tried to avoid obvious links between the objects in the collection and any sort of connection to being institutionalized, but I found it interesting that this was the only recording among Madeline’s things.

She came to Willard with a fairly complete record of her life in New York City, including her time studying at Columbia University and Hunter College.

She seemed to be interested in philosophy. There were quite a few references to Bergson in her papers.

Her handwriting was really lovely.

Her diaries were especially complete.

I searched online for this poem thinking that she might have copied it as an exercise in writing in English (her first language was French), but nothing turned up.

In any event, it is an incredible piece of writing.

It is especially interesting how well her life was documented in photographs, and that most of the images also had their original negatives. Looking at the dates in her diaries, many of these were taken in the 1920s.

The fox stole around her neck in the picture on the right is something that one doesn’t see anymore.

I have stayed in the Prince George Hotel on W. 27th Street twice in my life. Once in high school with my friends Jay, Jeff, and Dennis. That was an interesting trip! And once sometime in the 80s shortly before it became an SRO. Quite interesting as well.

You can check out the photos of Madeline’s cases at the Willard Suitcases site. Click on “The Cases”, scroll to the bottom and click on Madeline C. Be sure to click “view all” as there are many more than 25 images. The site was hacked into recently and everything seems to be sorted now. Huge thanks to Steve Fox at Born Digital Web Design for getting it fixed. He’s the man if you need a photo site set up.

Yesterday I took the train from Stratford upon Avon to Marylebone London. It was raining.

I made it with plenty of time to spare to make the 5.30 kickoff for the Fulham v Derby County match (ended in a 1-1 draw, but still fun).

After the match I walked back to my hotel past my favorite row of houses. Most of them have these amazing stained glass doors. Mind blowingly beautiful.

This morning I had a bit of a plan that started in Bishop’s Park.

I wanted to walk past the Cottage again. Last night, I entered the ground through door 36. Quite narrow.

I really like these graphic tiles set into the pavements along the Thames Walk. Especially the smell lines coming out of the poo.

Next stop was The Dove in Hammersmith for a pint of ESB. Nice

I started inside in the tiny bar and then moved to the deck out back.

Just before I got to my ultimate destination (next photo), I got a text from Cris at home telling me to call immediately. This is why; a giant fookin’ tree had fallen on my Element, and had knocked over my Vespa. I think the Element might just be toast, but the Vespa could be ok. Kind of put a damper on things.

Many years ago John Wilson surprised me at the end of a very long walk along the Thames with this view.

Rodrigo was an extremely literate man. His collection of books was so interesting.

He was a writer as well, as this editorial from his Salt Lake High School yearbook illustrates.

Rodrigo’s collection of books tells us so much about his view of the world.

From reading his writings, I got the sense that he was a bit lonely, and deeply spiritual.

The autographs page of his yearbook had only his signature.

I love the logo for Oliver R. Meredith’s Trunk Factory. I looked for information online about the business, and didn’t find much about the company, but did come across this great gallery of photographs of trunk manufacturers.

From time to time I like to post a nice photo of Peggy Ross, whom I can never thank enough for her help throughout the years that we have spent documenting the collection of suitcases. I literally could not (and would not) have done this work without her help.

Thanks for following. Check out all of Rodrigo’s collection here. Moving on to Michael B. tomorrow.

Herman G was featured in the 2004 New York State Museum exhibit on the suitcases. His story is interesting in that he was a patient at the “Craig Colony for Epileptics” before he came to Willard. I had posted about him around the time we photographed his box of photo gear and correspondence in 2015.

I have just uploaded the complete edit. You can see the collection here.

I’ll start work on Rodrigo L. tomorrow. His story is amazing. Thanks for following.

I am pretty sure that this was the last day we photographed any of Margaret D’s things. It is possible that as I move through the editing process I will come across more of her possessions, but I think this is it.

It was a mixed bag of items that we saw on this day.

Here is more of her work with a needle and thread.

This little button caught my eye.

I did a quick internet search for “TU-TEE” and found nothing. This almost never happens anymore. A commercial product with an interesting concept and zilch! “This game is something different, and enjoyed by old and young alike. It is replacing progressive card games in many sections of the country.” Apparently not in that many sections of the country or there would be some evidence of it. (Edit. As I was reading this post once it was public, I realized that the type face on the TU-TEE box looks exactly like the one I use for all of these posts. It is Palatino, and I’ve been using it for years. What a strange coincidence.)

This cup and saucer are so delicate and lovely.

So, that’s it for Margaret. Hers is the most complete collection of household and personal items in all of the cases that I shot, and in a funny way, it is difficult to move on to other Willard patients. Up next though is Herman G, whose story is fascinating in its own way. Thanks for following. You can see all of the cases here, and all of Margaret’s here. (Don’t forget to click on the “500” button at the bottom of the page, as I think the default page only shows the first 25. And as there are over 600 photos in her collection, you have to click on the “next” button to see the rest.)